well, it leads to valentine's day, anyway. of course, really, all those cards and things should be on tuesday, the ides (15th) of february, if we want to go for pagan origins instead of the corrupted catholic (then greeting card) version. see, valentine (one of several saints with the name, actually, but the one to which the holiday refers) was, according to catholica online, a holy priest in rome, who, along with saint marius (or rather, the guy that would later be named saint marius, cause the saint title doesn't apply retroactively, does it?), assisted the martyrs in the persecution under claudius ii. there are probably some nifty details about executions and torture that could fit in there, but the saint index doesn't bother with much detail. anyway, he was apprehended, and sent by the emperor to the prefect of rome, to make him renounce his faith. he refused and was beaten with clubs and beheaded february 14, about the year 270

why he got a holiday--i don't know. i guess he just got lucky in dying the day before a pagan party, namely the feast of the lupercalia, on the aforementioned ides of march (the same ides that figure in the death of julius caesar (44 bc), so why don't we make it caesar day and we could all eat salad and perform shakespeare; now, that'd be a holiday worth celebrating)). the feast of the lupercalia was about the goddess februata juno, the goddess of "fever" or passion in love

and, here's how it went:

pagan priests, called luperci (from the roman word for a wolf), would run the party from the lupercal cave on the palantine hill in rome, where romulus and remus were supposed to have been sheltered by that wolf mother of theirs. two naked young priests, assisted by vestal virgins--cause, what party is complete without vestal virgins?--would sacrifice a dog (in place of the harder to catch wolf, surely) and a goat. blood from the animals was spread on the priests' foreheads and wiped off with some wool dipped in milk. then, the priests dressed in loincloths made from the skin of the goat and ran about the city, scourging women with strips of skin taken from the sacrificed goat. now, that's a party. see, the romans believed that this flogging would purify them and assure their future fertility and easy childbirth

so, then came the shit the catholics kept (or corrupted, for a time). see, girls would write their names on slips of paper (called billets) and they'd go in an urn, and boys would pick them out, and that girl would be their partner for a day of erotic games and they were apparently expected to remain a couple for a year after (until the next ides of march came or the two of them decided to get married, whichever came first)

the catholic church, in trying to turn all this into saint valentine's day, tried putting saint's names on those billets. instead of finding an erotic game partner, the kids would find a saint to emulate in life, cause you know that's what adolescents want, a saint to emulate. that system didn't catch on, so, in the 1500s or so, catholics went back to the girl's name thing, and then the greeting card folks showed up and said, what the hell, why only pick one girl's name? why not have several girls? why not, instead of that random picking-out-of-an-urn thing, let's buy cards and give them to all the girls that we fancy, and screw those expectations of yearlong couplehood. hell, screw being a couple at all. send valentines to your best friend, your teacher, your parents, that creepy uncle that looks at you funny, your grandma, your brother. it's all about love, and who couldn't use a little more love?

ok, to be fair, the greeting card folks showed up later. the trading of homemade valentines started soemtime before the 1600s, after trying that saint's-name-on-the-card thing again. commercially available cards weren't until maybe a century later, and hallmark wasn't founded until 1910. but, still, we can blame all the extra decorations and crap on the card companies, certainly. and, they keep the exclusivity out of it--funny frazz yesterday made a thing of cards that said "for my one and only" coming in boxes of a dozen. but, that's how it is now, with elementary school kids making valentines in class and every student better get one or that just wouldn't be fair...

and religious folks wonder why kids grow up thinking less and less of monogamy and celibacy